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Fiber arts books I own and love

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Thursday, January 3, 2013

Three days into the new year, but here I am to say Happy New Year, and Happy New Knitting, everyone! It's a fresh, clean new year, right out of the package, still crisp around the edges. What shall we do with it? Something wonderful, perhaps?

I keep putting off updating the blogs because I got behind in FOs and other things to post, and thinking I'd have to get this updated before that -- well, never mind. Time to let it all go and start afresh.

Toward the idea of happy beginings, I started a new group on Ravelry. I've used the book The How of Happiness for a while for my own benefit. I've battled chronic depression for years, starting when I was a child and didn't know that my sadness was depression, or that being sad a lot was an unusual thing. The book has twelve research-supported "activities" for increasing happiness and well-being. Not in the "OMG I'm so happy ALL THE TIME!!!"kind of happiness. More what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote about "...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," in the Declaration of Independence. A life well-lived. A satisfying life.

But working through the book alone wasn't getting me as far as I wanted. I was trying focus on one chapter a month, and I kept petering out around August. I thought if I did it with others, maybe I'd stay on track, and we could help boost each other up. So toward that end I started The How of Happiness Ravelry group. If you're interested in boosting life quality, or are being treated for depression and want to use the book in addition to your treatment, or just curious, come and check it out.